Is there any value in trying to add a page to wikipedia
-
Hi Mozzers,
My manager has asked me this question and I'm not quite sure how to answer it.
"Is there any value in trying to add a page about our company to wikipedia"
I would have thought it's very difficult to get a page to stick in wikipedia if it's about a company that isn't huge (like Apple or Google). Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Personally I think it's potentially quite risky and unlikely to bring much traffic (because I can't imagine anyone would visit a page on wiki about my company - not that my company isn't great, because it is, it's just not HUGE or global...) I think a wiki page could be a bit spammy!
Would welcome your input, and I am happy to be proven wrong!
Thanks,
Amelia
-
Thank you Mark, I think you've made some excellent points here.
-
I will also note that we have a few Wikipedia links (we're a wine club and have an education section about obscure grapes) and while those are no-follow, we've gained a few do-follow links from people using the information directly from Wikipedia.
Personally, I'd guess that a company specific entry would be valuable, like any link on a site as popular as Wikipedia, even if the positive aspects are second hand.
-
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. I really appreciate everyone's input.
We'll put this in our 'ideas box' because it seems it needs a lot of thought to get right. I'll come back and let you know how we get on and what we decide to do (if we do anything at all that is).
-
If you get your page to stay, you may have a tricky time making it accurate. We've battled with the SEOmoz/Moz Wikipedia pages. Despite extensive notes in the Talk page from Rand, there are still a ton of inaccuracies in the page (last time I looked).
-
You can add a link to the website in external links, but as it's no followed it won't pass any link juice anyway.
The whole point of a wiki page is to give customers more information about a brand and will help to build your brand presence. I've previously had trouble with Wiki trying to get a listing as there was too much bias and not enough references.
-
Good Morning!
Wikipedia is a strange beast. It ranks incredibly well in Google because it is full of expertise, authority, and is very trustworthy. When writing for Wiki the most important question to ask is how are you going to make sure it stays there.
Wikipedia was built on the crowd sourcing premise. At first anybody could add content, and anybody could modify content. This is why many Universities were/are hesitant to accept Wikipedia as a reference in research. As time progressed, in an attempt to keep things more accurate, wikipedia started giving members more power, and gave them the voluntary job of monitoring sections. For example my brother earned a PhD in linguistics, he voluntarily acted as one of the moderators for anything that was posted in the linguistics section of Wikipedia. He would read everything, spell check, proof, and most important verify, verify, verify.
As a moderator he would look for 3 things:
- Validity- Is this information true?
- Benefit- Does this information progress the body of knowledge?
- Spam- Is this someone just trying to get a link?
The last one didn't happen as often. As much as he loved it, linguistics isn't exactly the hottest subject in the Wikipedia library, but none the less people would add content that on the surface appeared to be beneficial, but was actually superficial and just trying to get a link.
Every subject has a moderator. Everything is moderated now. That being said, the Wikipedia page for the "Olympics" is looked at much more closely than the Wikipedia page for "plastic infused rubber flux capacitor pencils"... A link from the Olympics Wikipedia page will be much more difficult to get, but potentially MUCH more valuable.
Wikipedia links are great, but they can be removed very easily if you are not careful. Find something special about your company to mention. Maybe some big mortgage/commercial trust laws that were passed that you participated in. Some sort of event that received coverage. Something about your founder/ceo. I personally think creating a link simply because your website is informative isn't enough to keep the link there. It might, who knows, but if you can find something else, something that had more of an impact, I would try and go with that. Go big, find something that really had an impact, and put that on wikipedia. If that doesn't work, you can always go smaller.
I also really like PixelByPixel's idea, veryyyyyyyyyy clever!
Hope that helps!
Edit In response to what Darren said (his post went up when I was typing) like PixelPixel said, all Wikipedia links are now NOFOLLOW. So there isn't really a link benefit from doing it. However, seeing as how every category is competing with Wikipedia for placement, might as well use it to your advantage.
Edit I just realized that 6 people posted while I was typing... geeze you are all fast!
-
For link juice I would say there is little worth if others are not linking to the wiki page directly. As a casing point I looked up a local company to me, LUSH are a cosmetics firm who are pretty global and have been in the news fairly regularly. Their website is DA 59 and PA from the home page 66. Looking up the wikipage it is only a PA 1, therefore will make little impact on their rankings as far as I understand things. Still, no to say it never will in the future as it is a authoritative document and wouldn't be considered as spammy.
-
Thank you.
I have tried (in my more spammier days) to get a large (second largest in the UK) double glazing company in wikipedia, and it got taken down. I think this largely because the company in question completely changed my factual copy with salesy bs that should not be on wiki. I think wiki did the right thing taking it off (though I argued against that at the time because it was my job to do so).
-
Hi,
It's definitely worthwhile having a brand page on Wikipedia. Links are no followed and it won't massively increase your traffic but it will help to build your brand and if someone searches for your brand it will more than likely also show on the 1st page.
The Google Knowledge graph also uses information from Wikipedia, so if you aspire to have the knowledge graph show in results for your brand, you will first need a wiki page.
It isn't straight forward getting your brand on Wikipedia though as submissions need to be unbiased and have authoritative citations and references to back them up or Wiki won't publish the page.
Kind Regards
-
From a traffic perspective, it is really worthwhile doing. We listed a couple of our official European sites on relevant wiki pages and it really brought in a lot of relevant, engaged traffic. SEO-aside, if you have a legitimate reason to maintain some sort of presence on Wikipedia, it's worth it for the reach and potential traffic.
Edit: Fixed terrible grammar.
-
Thank you, good points...
I'll have to have a think because we probably do have legitimate reasons for being referenced in wiki (our sites are very informative).
Thanks for the tip.
-
One sneaky thing you can do is find a niche write about it and link to it e.g.
You company sells office supplies,
write something amazing and useful on office supplies e.g. a history of office supplies.
you can sometimes get a resource link this way on an article that already exists etc.
obviously this is leaning towards the spammier tactics and the links are still no-follow but if you feel it to be beneficial can be handy trick... but shhh its a secret!
Hope that's helpful.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page Title restructuring
Hey Mozers! Surely you have noticed Google has been randomly restructuring our Page Titles to emphasize branding by placing the company/brand first, as opposed to after the "|" - a convention we had been accustomed to. I am wondering if the aforementioned warrants restructuring our client's (where branding is important) Page Titles as per Google's lead, or simply staying on the sidelines for now and letting Google do it? Anyone care to share their take on this? Thanks! Dino
Branding | | SCW0 -
Effects of a long-term holding page/503 http code whilst site is being rebranded?
We have a client who is adamant that during the rebranding of their company and website, a holding page is put in place from August 5<sup>th</sup> till go-live date on August 21<sup>st</sup>. They don’t look like budging on the matter, therefore we are looking to set up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page to tell Google the site is down for maintenance and redirect all pages back to the holding page. The general consensus is that implementing this for such a long period of time will see Google de-index all pages and the site will lose masses of traffic as a result for a substantial time afterwards. It would be great to get some insight on best practice for this situation, how Google will determine the situation and the consequences of such actions. If you have any case studies of similar situations or have firm knowledge of how this scenario would affect the site, I would be delighted to hear from you!
Branding | | AndrewAkesson0 -
How to Merge Existing Google Local and Google Business pages?
Hey everyone, I'm getting a wee bit frustrated. I have looked at every blog post I can about merging Google Local and Google Business Pages and I can't figure it out. I already have a verified Google Local page here https://plus.google.com/107404063103285095864/about?gl=CA&hl=en-CA and a Google Business Page here https://plus.google.com/b/100116630212547145177/100116630212547145177/posts . Both are already verified. How do I merge these existing profiles which are already verified?
Branding | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Page 1 Rankings, but not increase in traffic, contact form requests or calls
I am very frustrated. I have achieved page one rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo for highly relevant keywords and phrases. The keywords I am ranking on page one for are the same ones competitors are targeting and working well for them. I am interested in any feedback as to what could possibly be the cause for not receiving much traffic? I mean I am getting page 1, everyone I talk to says the sites are beautiful....Very confused. Now in the various keyword tools the do show that the various keywords receive anywhere from 25-250 searches per month, but those tools i find highly innacurate when performing a local campaign...oh yeah, these are all local campaigns i am talking about. Do I need to pursue paid marketing, PPC, or something. I always thought organic rankings were the way to go. Also, unfortunatly i am not able to divulge the URLs or concern due to client confidentiality issues. Thank you very much in advance for any insight:) I will send the URL's privately to anyone that is willing to take a look at things
Branding | | WebbyNabler0 -
Domain Name Value?
Hi, I am going to start a new website What I want to know is: www. keyword1 and keyword2 . com If I buy www. keyword1and . com And I put /keyword2 will this get any value? Or is it better to find a shorter more branded domain name.. rather than chasing for value from Google.
Branding | | mosaicpro0 -
How to increase the value of naturally created low value links
My site is starting to generate natural links (hooray!). Basically, as part of my client sign-up process, I encourage my clients (home improvement contractors, plumbers, roofers, electricians) to link back to their own profile page on my site from their own site, either manually or using a badge I've created and made available. I have 2 questions about this. First of all, the vast majority of these links are from seriously low quality sites with basically no backlink profile whatsoever. Many of these sites aren't even indexed. So I'm starting to feel like I'm doing all this hard work for nothing. Is there anything I can do to increase the value of these incoming links, without spending too much time or money? I'm thinking directory submission and/or link wheel gigs on fiverr (really crappy SEO, I know, but just to get these sites bumped up a notch, and hopefully not do any damage to my site, as they're a step removed.) Second question, the profile pages that my clients can create on my site includes a nofollowed link to their site. Does the nofollow save me from having all of my incoming links tagged as reciprocal? Is there anything else I should be doing?
Branding | | menachemp0 -
Should we have customers like our URL or our Facebook brand page?
(Note: main question in bold) I know this post basically establishes that Facebook shares are not a strong cause of increased rankings. But what about likes? I've searched and read through the forum and YouMoz blog but haven't really found this question answered. We just redesigned our site and we're implementing sharing options in the booking and order completion processes - should we point the Facebook Like button to like our URL or our Facebook brand page (currently with 3,800+ likes)? Seems that a like of the URL would be more direct ranking value (what we're going for), but according to that same post mentioned above, Google doesn't crawl or index FB wall pages... so is all Facebook activity - shares, url likes, brand page likes - for naught? (at least for now, till Google starts using that info)
Branding | | DanielH0 -
One Page desapeared from Google results over the weekend.
Has anyone had this happen? My page (just one page) is gone from the search results. Not only did we lose our position in Google (we were #9) now the entire page is completely gone from Google index. However, It is on the first page of Bing and Yahoo. We did have our server down from Friday to Monday. I went into Google webmaster tools on Monday and saw a big X next to sitemap. It said HTTP Error 404 detected on August 21, 2011. So Google went in on Sunday and came up with the error. But why only one page is missing and all the other pages still show up? I was thinking that page was blacklisted by Google but when I went to Webmaster Tools to listen to "Requesting reconsideration of your site" video all they talk about is the "site" being blacklisted not a particular page. Any one has any ideas?
Branding | | DmitryP0